Nurses Day at the Capitol!

Thank you for your dedication to being an Advocate - for nurses and the patients we care for.

Our voice is strong together - standing side by side in the House and Senate Chamber - being recognized by our state legislators - sent a powerful message.

Much appreciation for the Governor's Nurses Month proclamation, and the support of the Public Health Committee.

Want to Get More Involved

Join CT Nurses Association

Request to join the Government Relations Committee

Update on HB 5058 an act Implementing the Nurse Licensure Compact

 The House passed HB 5058 An Act Implementing the Nurse Licensure Compact (4/18) – now it moves to the senate.
While we did not get everything we hoped for  we hope we addressed the major issues and gave us a path forward to address the rest!

HAVEN

• HAVEN Funding: will remain financially whole for the time being – the bill amendment now includes an additional allocation of funds from the General fund to HAVEN. It will, for the time being,  cover the loss of funds from less nurses purchasing a CT license ( nurses with a state of residence outside of CT no longer need to buy a CT license – there are 26K nurses licensed in CT with a home address out of the state- they will mostly no longer need a CT license.)

• HAVEN and Confidentiality for Nurses in the Program- a pathway was created for a multistate nurse to avoid getting a flag on their license if they are in an alternate to discipline (ATD) program before converting to a SSL. Please note: all nurses (that have a compact in any state across the country) that are enrolled in an ATD program are not allowed to have a multi-state license (MSL) – they are only allowed to have a single state license (ssl) in their state of residence

TASK FORCE

An amendment established an implementation task force to advise implementation, evaluation and address remaining concerns while the compact is being implemented. It is through the vehicle of the task force that we hope to address our concern about:

1. Strategies to mitigate creating a system that stigmatizes nurses choosing a single state license (we have heard this from other states that have been in the compact for over 20 years)

2. Data. We are going to be in a huge data hole. As the 26K nurses no longer get a CT license we will not know when they are in our state working. We will never know when nurses using the compact are working in CT or when CT nurses are leaving. We need to identify the information we need to evaluate workforce as well as the impact of the implementation of the compact.

We are also addressing a couple outstanding issues through discussion on the floor of the House and the Senate. This includes ensuring that the state will not mandate anyone to get a MSL (this happened in RI) and may further contribute to the notion that nurses with a single state license have an issue that prevents them from getting the MSL v its just a choice to have the SSL. We hope this will buffer SSL stigma in the meantime.

 We will also be on the look out for any proposed changes to the nurse licensure fees.

2024 Legislative Agenda